The Office: Of Guest Stars and Neck Beards

Jennifer Celotta (left) with Jennie Tan of the indispensable Office fan site >OfficeTally.com; a still from the episode "Goodbye, Toby," which Celotta wrote.

VF Daily’s Q&A series features interviews with the top talent from television’s best shows. NBC’s Emmy Award-winning The Office is a documentary-style sitcom about life at the Scranton, Pennsylvania, branch of the Dunder Mifflin paper-supply company. It airs Thursday nights at nine p.m. E.S.T.

Jennifer Celotta is an executive producer and writer on The Office. She and Paul Lieberstein are the assistant showrunners under Greg Daniels, who created the American version of The Office.

VF Daily: What are some of the new developments we can look forward to on the show?

Jennifer Celotta: After we took a break from production last fall, we had an idea—and we’re not really talking about the specifics of it—but it’s motivated by this guy coming in and taking over as Michael’s boss. He’s kind of the new Jan, or the new Ryan, and it’s Idris Elba, who played Stringer Bell on The Wire and is fantastic. So we had this arc of stories that starts when this new guy comes in, and Michael is upset because he feels like he was passed over for the job.I see, very cool. So you've been involved with show since its inception, right?

No, I came second season, so I missed the first six episodes.

How did you get involved?

I was working on Malcolm in the Middle, and I left Malcolm and had a deal with NBC, and I loved The Office. “Diversity Day” was one of the best things I’d ever seen on television. I heard Greg [Daniels] wanted to meet with me, and I met him at a Coffee Bean somewhere. I desperately wanted to work on the show. I thought it was just a perfect blend of awkwardness, subtle comedy, and dark comedy. I was thrilled that Greg brought me on.

I guess it has a little more in common, in terms of those elements, with Malcolm in the Middle than with most shows on TV.

A little bit. Malcolm did that very well, too. And I was only at Malcolm briefly. But where Malcolm had the broader elements, I feel like I appreciate more of the subtlety of this show. This has been my favorite show to write for, for sure. I missed some of the earlier years of Malcolm, so I don’t know exactly what it was like at the beginning. It was a very good show as well, but I’ve just never had an experience like The Office.

What do you think makes it unique?

Well, one of the episodes I wrote was “Grief Counseling,” and I constantly think about that episode. It was an internal story: Michael was dealing with grief [over the death of his former boss]. On most shows you don’t even write internal stories, because they’re a little bit hard to—on some other shows the storytelling has to be more obvious.

Right. And this is the episode where the rest of the employees didn’t even know the guy who died, right?

Yeah. And this was an internal story where the character it was happening to, Michael, wasn’t even aware that it was happening to him. So to be able to write that was just such a treat. And Steve Carell is just a genius, so he can convey the inner workings of his brain with just—you know, I don’t know how he does it. He’s just a genius.

Would you say that’s your favorite of the episodes you’ve written?

It was the most rewarding episode that I’ve written. But I really enjoyed “The Duel,” too [from the current season, in which Andy and Dwight square off over Angela]. That one also felt different to me. When I wrote it, we knew that we were leading to a duel in a parking lot, so what I spent most of my writing time doing was trying to ground it in reality—how to get these two men to a position where they could potentially be dueling in a parking lot. I liked writing the awkwardness. It’s one of my favorite things that we get to do, and it’s what I loved about the British series so much.

When you have a long-running plotline like the love triangle between Andy, Angela, and Dwight, do you know when you first conceive of it how it’s going to end up?

Not when we first conceived of it. But we had the idea for a duel, I think, at the middle of last year. I think it was Paul [Lieberstein]’s idea. I’m pretty sure that the duel and the Prius running on silent was Paul’s idea. That was a fun one to write.

I get the sense that it’s a very collaborative process.

Oh yeah. It’s fantastic. There’s no hierarchy with the writers. Whoever comes up with a great idea or a great joke, that’s what we use. Everybody gets along incredibly well here. An interesting thing about the way this show is run is that everybody’s so invested, not only in the show as a whole but also in their particular episodes. They’ll write it, obviously, but then they’ll also get involved in the casting process, and they’ll be on the set when the director is directing, and if they have a different idea for the script than what the director is thinking they’ll discuss it. So from beginning to end, they’re super involved, whereas on some other shows, you write a script and then you’re done.

I’d think that on some shows they might worry about the director telling the writer, “This is my job, get out of here.”

No, the directors are really collaborative, too. It’s kind of great all around—sort of a perfect storm of greatness.

And you’ve directed a couple episodes yourself, right?

I directed one, and I loved it. It was kind of an easier way to step into the world of directing—to have this incredible cast, and the crew, and our cameramen, Randall [Einhorn] and Matt [Sohn]. I did an enormous amount of learning that week. I would be excited to do another one.

Have you ever felt the desire to get in front of the camera like some of your fellow writers?

Oh yes. I desperately want to be a Schrute, and I don’t know what it’s going to take. There’ve been a couple of times when I’ve been offered, you know, one line as a waitress somewhere, and I’m like, “No, no, no.” I’m holding out to be a Schrute.

Dwight’s sister or something?

Yeah, definitely! Mike [Schur] and Paul were saying I wasn’t weird enough, or weird-looking enough. But I assert that I’m plenty weird-looking, or you put an Amish neck beard on me or something. Mike, who plays Mose [Schrute, Dwight’s illiterate cousin], is normal-looking, and they put an Amish neck beard on him. So there’s got to be something we can do.

Is coming up with fresh story arcs and new relationships the hardest part of your job? To keep it from becoming one of those show where it’s like, “O.K., who in the cast has this person not slept with yet?”

Yeah, and we’re trying to balance that out. We really enjoyed the Dwight-Andy-Angela triangle, but I think it was important to get it to a point where the duel happened, and now we can free those characters up for other stories. And it is also an office, and there are other dynamics that are interesting. It hasn’t felt difficult yet to come up with new, interesting things.